E788 | Coaching, Autopilot Practices and Business Partners with Courtney Morse

In this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny Matta welcomes Courtney Morse, owner of Natural Wellness Physical Therapy in Wichita, Kansas, and PT Biz's new head coach. Courtney shares his journey from starting his practice to stepping into a full-time coaching role while maintaining his business—a move that required strategic delegation, leadership development, and personal growth.

Finding the Right Mentors—and Becoming One

Courtney’s entrepreneurial journey began with mentorship in mind. Inspired by Dr. Andy’s connection to Kelly Starrett, Courtney sought guidance to bridge the gap between clinical skills and business success. But mentorship isn’t just about learning from others—it’s also about paying it forward. Courtney explains how coaching others has deepened his own understanding of leadership and business, emphasizing that mentorship is a two-way street.

The Secret to Scaling: Leadership, Not Micromanagement

What allowed Courtney to shift from day-to-day clinic operations to a coaching role? Delegation and leadership. Drawing lessons from books like The E-Myth and Extreme Ownership, he built a business where he’s not the sole decision-maker. Courtney’s philosophy:

• Empower your team. Hire smart people and trust them to do their jobs.
• Decentralize decisions. Leaders should guide, not micromanage.
• Keep the vision alive. As the business grows, your role evolves into being the “keeper of the vision.”

Working with Your Spouse: A Secret Weapon?

Courtney also opens up about running a business with his wife, Rebecca. Despite common advice to avoid mixing business with marriage, he shares how it’s been a positive force for their relationship. “No one cares about your business thriving more than your spouse,” he says. Their complementary skill sets—Courtney as the visionary, Rebecca as the operator—have been key to both their business growth and personal connection.

The Biggest Barrier to Success? Fear of Failure

Courtney has coached countless entrepreneurs through PT Biz’s Rainmaker program, designed to help clinicians transition from side hustles to full-time practices. His biggest observation?

“The number one thing holding people back is fear of failure.”

Whether it’s fear of rejection, reluctance to sell, or hesitation to put themselves out there, many clinicians struggle with the mindset shifts required for business growth. Courtney’s advice: embrace failure as part of the process. It’s not about avoiding mistakes—it’s about learning from them.

Continuous Growth: The Entrepreneur’s Mindset

One recurring theme in this conversation is the importance of continuous learning. Whether it’s picking up new business skills, learning to juggle (literally), or taking piano lessons, Courtney believes in staying curious and uncomfortable. “If you’re not learning, you’re not growing,” he says. Entrepreneurship forces you to develop new skills, face challenges, and evolve constantly—which is exactly what makes it exciting.

Final Thoughts

This episode is more than a business discussion—it’s a reflection on growth, resilience, and the mindset needed to thrive in both business and life. If you’re a clinician looking to step into entrepreneurship or a business owner seeking balance, Courtney’s journey offers valuable lessons on leadership, delegation, and personal development.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick, if you were serious about starting or growing your cash based practice, I want to formally invite you to go to Facebook and join our PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. This is a group of over 6, 000 providers all over the country. And it's a pretty amazing place to start to get involved in the conversation.

Hope to see you there soon. Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skillset in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matta and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession.

I've been a staff PT. I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company physical therapy business helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale their own cash practices So if this sounds like something you want to do listen up because i'm here to help you

What's going on? Dr. Andy here with the pti for our podcast and Today we got courtney morris. Courtney happens to be the owner of natural wellness physical therapy in wichita, kansas, but he's also [00:01:00] our Head coach at PTBiz, relatively new position, has been coaching with us for a long time but has now come on full time with us and still owns a practice.

So this is an interesting combination. We're going to talk about this and how all this started. But I got to start with this funny story. The first time I talked to Courtney, 100 percent sure he was a girl. And I was actually really excited. And your name could definitely be either, could go either direction.

But at the time, We, I don't think we're working with a single female and I was really excited because my mom had been giving me a hard time about, working with more female entrepreneurs, which I tried really hard. But to know with no luck now, actually like half of the people we work with are women, which is a huge step forward from where we started, obviously.

But I was really excited. And when you answered the phone, I was a little let down that it was that you were a male, but it worked out.

Courtney: You and every other telemarketer in the world is very surprised when I pick up the phone. Yeah, I think you're a, yeah, a baritone [00:02:00] voice coming out of that thing.

Yeah, exactly. And truthfully I don't know if I shared this with you or not. Like I remember that day that we were on the phone the first time. And the only thing I, the reason I got on the phone with you is because you had said in a couple of podcasts before, like Kelly Starr is my mentor.

Good enough for me. Get me closer to Kelly's story. That is the only thing I wanted to do at the time. And it worked out for both of us, I think.

Danny: Yeah, it's not a bad litmus test, right? I think that when I look at, just how I feel incredibly fortunate that I have a friendship with, Kelly and Juliet, and that it's somebody that's a little bit ahead of me in life, not just like business and clinically was a big mentor, but I think it's super cool to have somebody that you can see as like a example of how you want to have this, at least for me, I have a unique life that has these variables that a lot of people maybe don't maybe to them it doesn't matter, right?

But like I see somebody who is. They're independently successful in business, they're subject matter experts at what they do, they're very [00:03:00] passionate about what they do, they're really helping a lot of other people, their kids are awesome. That was one of the things that like, when I first met them, I met their kids and their kids were relatively young, but their kids were, they were not here to talk to an adult, they were helping around the house, they were independent in a lot of ways, they're like real small.

And I remember coming home, I flew back to Hawaii and we were living here at the time and I remember telling Ashley, I was like, I don't know what kind of mutants these people are, but Like I want to end up like where they're at. This is awesome. So yeah if that, to me that's a litmus test of somebody that I want to be like and if my mentor drew you in, and the proximity is closer and and that's awesome because I think all of us, that you, me.

Kelly Juliet, many people that we work with, they view this sort of, it's like this fringe entrepreneur life, right? This is w we've been around enough entrepreneurs to we to where we see most of them. There's not balance in their life. They're very successful on paper and they, and there's a lot of turmoil and things that are not going well in other parts of their life.

And that was never something I was interested in doing. And it was so fortunate to find somebody [00:04:00] early on that was like a good example of what that looked like. So this sort of like healthy, active. Life where you're challenging yourself in a number of domains, but you're like intentionally having a fucking awesome time the whole time.

That's such a rare thing. And that was something that, I try to instill in other people because I was fortunate enough to see it early on. And I think you're a great example of that as well, which is even cooler for us to see the role you've taken now with PT biz, which allows so much more even remote flexibility, which is obviously a really cool thing as your kids get older and older.

Courtney: It's funny that we're, I didn't plan on this chat about this, but it's funny that we're talking about it because this is like the exact passage today and like the daily stoic is like watching the wise and like talking about pick out this person that's in front of you and emulate this stuff that they're going towards and they're going away from.

And it was just something that we're chatting about that. And one of our, we have basically values for our core values for our family. And one of the things that I want to do is I want to Take mentorship from people willing to offer and provide it. But I also want to provide mentorship from people that are seeking it out, right?

[00:05:00] It's a two way street. There are always people that are ahead of you, but if you're not also we sometimes have this thing where we're only engaging ourselves against people that are ahead of us. And we don't ever look back and be like, Oh, look how far I've come or look all this other stuff. And to be able to look back and be like, Oh, I remember being there.

I can help them get through that. That's one of my, that's one of my favorite things is to point out like, no, it was hard for me too. And you're on the right track. Keep going. And so it's just funny that this is where the conversation started.

Danny: I think that's coaching in a nutshell, right?

In a lot of ways, it's funny. That's what our patient visits turn into as well, because some of the people we work with are. Are older than us and they've got experience different things and I always felt I felt so fortunate with certain patients that I would see, you see it depends what you're open to.

I would see certain people there would be examples of what not to do and what is a good example of what to do. And on the flip side. I would have these, younger, athletes that I would have a chance to work with. And sometimes I, I feel like when they're like high school, middle school, high school, college athletes, it's like, [00:06:00] they really don't care.

They're just they don't care what you have to say. They're busy. They're thinking about their own shit. But even still like I would give, if I were a youth athlete. I'm talking about, the daily stoic, I would give the obstacle is the way if I had an athlete who was going through a pretty big surgery, I would give him a copy of the obstacles the way, if they had an ACL tear or something like that.

And I, I just don't know how many of them actually read it. Probably not many, but I can tell you a couple of them did. And, for them to be like, yeah, they're like 18 to 20 years old, right? And it's just dude, this was really helpful. Thank you so much, it's worth it, even if there's only a small amount of people that are interested in getting mentorship.

And they may not even know that they're interested in it, right? They just are like, maybe trying to figure out what to do with their life or something like that. It's just such a big, challenging surgery to, to get over. And little things can help them get mentally where they're trying to go, much better.

Courtney: Yeah. And it is funny when you run into somebody that's kind of thirsts for your knowledge and be like, yes, I like we're on the right track. And you're like, Oh my God, it's so engaging and it's fulfilling on our side just to, cause [00:07:00] I think by nature, people want to be educators. They want to share their experience.

They want to talk about what worked for them. And if they don't, yeah. It's if you went on vacation and you just went by yourself and you didn't take any pictures of it and you didn't tell anybody about after like you're missing the whole point. Like it's not like a 1950s, have a big carousel and you make everybody watch your, your slideshow from your trip to Bermuda or whatever.

But that's a big part of taking a trip. It's let me share my experience with you. And that's essentially just what coaching is. It's Cool. I've been here. I can help you with this. Let me show

Danny: you what that it's memory dividends. That's what I think. Think of it.

I'm terrible at documenting. I'm laughing because I'm terrible documenting our our trips that we take or things that we do, but Ashley's fantastic at it. And, every year she puts together like an actual physical sort of yearbook of our year. And it takes a long time. But, we have she's been doing this now for over 10 years, I guess it's been at least 10 years.

And we have these physical books and our kids will get them out, like sometimes with their cousins and their friends. And they just they're just so into it. It's such a novel thing for [00:08:00] them. And we remember, yeah, these like sort of memory dividends and. And and the things that we were able to do.

But I think to your point, even when you're working with somebody and you're able to share an experience, share like that gives you a memory dividend, right? If I share an experience, good or bad of something that I went through that relates to what they're talking about I feel that to some degree again, which is like a cool way to re experience things in life.

And I think that's what we were talking about before, before the podcast was just like. How life can happen fast or slow as you want based on how willing you are to, really go out of your way to try to plan new things and experience new things and be intentional about what you're doing and be present.

And that's such a big part of our life now that we almost take it for granted. And, but when I meet other people that are not doing that it's almost I want to like shake them, I want to be like, dude, what are you doing? Wait, the fuck you're missing. All this stuff. You're so busy with your problems that you have going on.

You're missing what's happening with this important person in your life or whatever. And it's also interesting because on [00:09:00] the business side, we get to look at this from a 30, 000 foot perspective. And when somebody we're working with, we're like, are you kidding me right now? What are we talking about?

How are you missing this? This thing is so obvious because we're not connected to it, right? So I'm sure there's parallels there that you've noticed as well.

Courtney: Yeah. And I think again, maybe going back to your point before is having the ability to have people to point out and guide you along that way as well to, it's like that Ferris Bueller quote, which I'll bush or whatever.

But if you don't stop and look around a little bit, like Life's gonna pass you by. And so sometimes it does take some prompting, which I, this is definitely not how the quote actually but it definitely takes some prompting from time to time for people to be like, Hey man, like that work life balance myth.

It's not like 40 hours a week clock in clock out. And my wife and I had this discussion at the beginning of the year. It's Hey my job and my work is changing for the first time in seven years. Like it's going to be a season that we're going to be working harder. Yeah. Like you're going to be doing more at the office.

I'm going to be doing more that's separate. And [00:10:00] so this will be the season. Like we're going to put our head down a little bit, but then we're going to pick our head back up when we get another chance. So it's not daily or weekly work life balance. It's sometimes quarterly or annually work life balance.

And so it's nice to have people that will point that out to you. Cause you're like, Oh man, I'm doing it all wrong. No, you're okay.

Danny: You bring up a good point is just, for us to be able to, bring you on full time is a huge, it's just a huge advantage to be able to have somebody as smart as you are with as much experience that has as much coaching experience, but as, but also relevant business experience with these types of these types of clinics.

And, but we're also it's a fine line that we have to keep sometimes with coaches because we don't want to, we don't want to put them in a place where it cripples their business, cripples their practice. For you working to the point where you were less and less active in your own business to where you could even do something like this.

What would you say the key steps are? Let's say somebody, maybe they're interested in, um, maybe they have an opportunity to do something else they're interested in, right? And they don't, but they don't want to necessarily sell their practice. I don't want to shut it down or whatever the [00:11:00] other options might be.

What are some of the key steps you took to be able to free up enough time to where you could even, do this?

Courtney: Yeah, there's actually three things that I was kinda thinking about, and two of those came from books that were basically handed to me right out of the gate. And so like my last handful of patients while I was working in network, before I started my practice, I was treating like a serial entrepreneur, a guy that is running three or four, five businesses.

Smart guy. He's involved in a lot of things and he suggested, the classic, couple of books here. One of 'em was like the E Myth and em Myth was good. And then he recommended profit versus that's great. Cause I, I'm not a bookkeeper. And then the third one he recommended was a book called built to sell.

And it's a parable. It's a really short book. But it basically talks about this guy's trying to sell his advertising agency and they come and do an evaluation or evaluation form and like your business is worthless. You are the key man and we can't do anything without you. And so from the very beginning, I'm like, I'm not going to be the only person in this business that can, make decisions and I'm going [00:12:00] to really try to make sure that that everybody's empowered to do their job.

And so the other book that kind of came with that was like extreme ownership and that concept of decentralized command. I'm going to hire a really smart people and I'm going to let them do their job. I'm going to guide them along the way. But if we have core values in place, or if we have ideas or tenants in place just do what you think I would tell you.

And if, That's what it is. And you're, they'll be right. 90 percent of the time. And so those two things don't be the only person that can make decisions. Let everybody else be leaders in your organization. And then finally, like what I get to enjoy now, the main part is I just get to be like the keeper of the vision.

And I get to be the culture, like the cultural touch point of this practice. And um, we've lost zero PTs since I've been in practice. We've had two admins come and go and a natural pain free terminus. Other than that, like people come to us and this is a great job.

I was like, I know isn't this great. And it's not because I'm micromanaging them. It's not because [00:13:00] like we're Harper on them all the time. It's just because from the very beginning, we decided like. You're going to have a lot of responsibility on here. And just because I'm not getting on you about every little thing doesn't mean I'm not paying attention.

So don't mistake that. Don't mistake my, not micromanaging you for me, not knowing what's going on, I'm going to give you sometimes enough leash to fail and be like, what'd you learn from that? And so this is a very intentional move from us from, myself from the very, very beginning.

Danny: Yeah. And, this is a business like Ashley and I, where, you work with your spouse, but, how involved is she still in? In the practice. And what are the key roles that she's doing at this point that are also allowing you guys to get to the point where your time is just so much more freed up.

Courtney: Yeah. Rebecca joined our practice in basically May or June of 2019. And so she was a teacher for 13 years and she left right before the COVID year. So that was really good. She was just going to come on and like casually sign to help or help us on the side with like nutrition coaching. Which she still [00:14:00] does.

But what we really leaned into her for is she's the chief administration officer, like she's doing payroll, she's doing finance, she's doing running the stuff through the CRM and the hub sponsor like that. So she is. Working now more than she probably ever was as a teacher. But for a long time she felt like this isn't a good fit.

This is not my skillset. And it's just been like this kind of slow buildup of confidence being like, no, you're doing it. And every time we would have these quarterly meetings and this is this fun practice that we do. We do it twice a year. And it's basically we drop all of our titles and everybody says two things.

Number one, What is the person across from you do that you admire? They help the organization grow. What is it that you really like about it? And then number two, what are they doing that's harming the organization the most, and they do it for me, they do it for everybody in the organization. And it helps level the playing field for everybody, but for years, they would just tell her like.

You're doing a good job. You should be more confident about that. And so now we're just, [00:15:00] I'm just now starting to see her she's doing more and more of the back office stuff every year. And we're just starting to see her be like, yeah, I'm getting all of this. I feel like I'm doing it.

It's great. Like it's a total, like you don't have an MBA. Like she taught journalism for 13 years. And so she's doing a lot. She's doing a lot.

Danny: Yeah, but I think as a teacher, it's interesting. We see these translate these skills to translate and, teachers have to be organized.

They have to be, natural communicators. They have to be able to have high emotional intelligence as well and be able to understand people. They make fantastic. Operators in in businesses as well. And I do see, I saw the same thing with Ashley too, right? Where she was like I was running like non profits, this is a different business, I'm not a clinician.

But it's that's not really what we need you to do. We're not asking you to treat somebody's back pain. We're asking you to really and systemize the business and, be a great manager of a business which, what's also cool about that, which I think, from a teacher standpoint is the restrictive [00:16:00] nature of Of the teacher's work life, with being in class and the restrictive nature of the clinician, the 2 together, that's a lot of restricted time.

And when you look at a couple, it's very helpful if 1 person is going to have a really restrictive schedule that the other person can have a bit more flexibility. And for her to be able to. Move to that role, while you're still treating a lot of patients, I can imagine that probably was a big unlock as far as being able to have a bit more time flexibility.

Cause these are things you don't necessarily need to be in the office to do. They need to be done, but not necessarily in an office during set periods of time.

Courtney: It was really powerful for us. And again, If you're working with your spouse, like nobody cares about your business surviving and thriving more than your spouse does.

And I don't know, I, you hear this advice about never working with your spouse, but it's been a really, it's brought us closer together. It's been a really positive experience for us both. And when we got to. The point where things were going well, it's like we didn't have to [00:17:00] ask off anybody to take vacation.

We didn't have to ask anybody to like, it was just like, it was almost like when we were newly married. And you get, that us versus them mentality. No, we're going to take your dad's cell phone bill and we're going to take, this car payment over like we're taking all this stuff back in house and it's us against everybody else.

And so it was nice to have that renewed sense of vigor in terms of a relationship. And then when it goes well you have somebody to celebrate with that really understands what you're going through. And then when it goes shitty you'd be like, Oh my God, like this sucks. And I'm like, I know but they understand too.

Because sometimes I would assume, if you're not working with your spouse and your partner, these things don't, align as well as, you would hope, like maybe your spouse is doing really well at work and you're doing really shitty. And so it's nice that we're, we are on the same sinusoidal wave here, basically.

Danny: I think that, I think the general advice of don't ever work with your spouse, which I got the same thing, right? I think that. It applies in certain situations and really it's terrible. It's a terrible advice and others and it really [00:18:00] depends on your how you work together your skill sets. And what I tend to see actually is it not just working relationships, but just in general relationship relationships that seem to work really well.

Like this whole, the phrase like opposites attract. I think opposites are actually Great matches in terms of creating structure and consistency within a relationship because like I think of Ashley and I are very different in terms of how our brains work what things we like to do and You know if I was I feel if I was married to somebody that was just like me it would be chaotic it would be just like oh my gosh, it'd be the worst, And for her and we've been we've been married now for God.

What is it going to be 18 years? Coming up 17, when it's that many, you forget 17 or 18. We haven't figured that out. So I'll have to reverse engineer the math here in a 2nd. We've been this January, this 20 years of us [00:19:00] dating, we had our first date, January, 20 years ago.

And so we actually just celebrated our little dating anniversary recently, which was interesting. Because people think, I think we're younger than we are, and they, and we tell them, you tell them you're dating, you've been dating for 20 years, and they're like, what are you talking about? It is a long time but for us, it's worked really well.

And. In our business, we were very worried about that because we had gotten that advice from other people, mainly from family. There's no shit about running a business together. Actually, like usually the people that are telling you that have never actually worked with their spouse. And when we started to work together, it was great because you're right.

You don't have to worry about the other person. There's a level of trust that you have that you cannot have with somebody that's not, a family member or a spouse. And we had very different skill sets. What we struggled with, and I think what most people struggled with, is sometimes you have to lead and sometimes you have to follow.

And when it comes to, sales, marketing, clinical stuff, whatever, how we're going to do these things, that's, that was my wheelhouse, right? But when it came to, hey, this is how we organize things, how we make it [00:20:00] repeatable, this is how we create a system, this is how we're going to, You can't just do this.

You got to make sure you follow this system, right? That was ashley's wheelhouse and it made a business right versus me. I just had patience That wasn't in a real business. She actually created that and it was because her brain works different and it's such a beneficial way to me

Courtney: Whenever I'm coaching spouses that are, coming into a new business together, I always end up with rocket fuel which is good.

And it talks about the difference between a visionary and an integrator. And one has a much cooler name than the other, but they're both equally important parts. And so when my favorite part about that whole book is that it gives you permission not to have to be good at the other person's job.

It's not only do I not have to do both jobs. I don't even have to be good at your job and I don't have to think about it and I'm not going to apologize for it. And so there are things in my practice, in my business, like some email comes to me like I cannot stand paperwork. Like I know that there are people that spend all day [00:21:00] looking at papers and they work at a bank or they work in an insurance company or whatever else it is.

I get one letter from the bank and it's like a repellent and I'm like, I can't even look at it. And I forwarded to Rebecca as fast as possible. Like I couldn't even see these words. And like she deals with it, she probably doesn't want to any more than I do, but that is the relationship that we've had and then we built is I can't do it.

And she's I'll do it. Okay, cool. But both of those jobs are equally important or the businesses that survive. And so I'm

Danny: laughing because so we're going out on this date the other night. And one of our kids checks the mail like right before we're about to leave and there's like an IRS letter in there and I'm like, I put it to the side.

I'm not opening this shit before I go to dinner. You're ruining my dinner.

Go straight to opening it. I was like, what are you doing? Just I can't not open it now. It's like such different. It turns out we're getting like, it was like a small amount of like interest returners. It was nothing. It was nothing bad. It was actually [00:22:00] something positive. But even still, I was like, I'm not even chancing it, like I don't want to look at it just, yeah, it is.

It does feel, it feels like I just want to like, just put that to the side, deal with it later. Cause it's hard, you're right. Different people work different ways as far as, especially I noticed this with. When we started to have like bookkeepers and accountants and and I'd realized I was like, you like, like this shit, huh?

Like you like doing this for your job and they're like, oh yeah, I'd love organizing these numbers. And, I was like, wow, there's people that are just wired differently and when they find the thing that they really like to do, and I think this is why, we work so well together or even Ashley today, perfect example, we're looking at all of our accountability groups and it's a big task.

It's like our, a huge puzzle, right? And she is just so excited to get in and work on this. And I would take one look at it and it gives me a borderline headache, right? And thank God that there's different people in businesses. Otherwise, they would just not work.

Courtney: She's like Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind.

And you're like Charlie Day with a murder board. And you're

Danny: [00:23:00] like, yeah, that's exactly right. That's what it looked like with her. She's like moving stuff around. You can tell she's just locked in. Like she barely wants to eat lunch cause she's so like in the zone, and for me, I look at a task like that and I would run away.

I would literally be like a missing person before I had to do that. People would be, wondering where Danny went and it just would never get done. It gives me so much. Anxiety and stress and like I just don't like it versus if she had to do a podcast like this Oh boy, she would be hiding underneath in her bed or something, right?

She'd be like I'm not doing it. You're not gonna get me to do it you know these superpowers and that book is really good rocket fuel is fantastic because it does show you that people are different and When you find that and I think when couples find that in particular, it can give them a lot of confidence that, they are, this could work really well and I think the other thing that's really cool about it is, like you said, the shared there's ups and downs, obviously but sharing some of the wins in particular when you're just doing something really challenging together and it's working yeah.

And [00:24:00] there's, it's so awesome. It's so hard to explain without somebody actually like having gone through that. But it's like one of my kind of more favorite things that I've done with Ashley is actually, start, grow, run businesses and and be involved in that together. I think it's really cool.

Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes wherever you listen to the podcast, and please leave a rating and review. This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast for more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom.

So if you do that, I'll greatly appreciate it. Now back to the podcast.

Courtney: We always do like an end of year, like before we, we call our pre annual meeting, where Rebecca and I will get together and we will recap the last year. And we always start going through that by looking at the pictures from the last year Oh man cause it's, we're always moving forward.

And it's easy to forget some of that stuff. I'm like, Oh man, like this is a pretty good year. And then. You get to share, like you have this [00:25:00] designated time where man, we accomplished this, and then look at all the stuff that we built and look at all these people that we helped and look at all the, the people that we employed and that's really fun and really worthwhile to share together.

And then you're like, cool, like what's next year and you get to set your sights together and then you're really like leaning into it. Like these goals are like, I think we can achieve this by Q2 swing. Yeah. And so it's just I think it's so fun to have somebody that knows you so well and balances out your crazy with their own set of crazy and because that's, you're both crazy.

But as long as you're crazy in complimentary ways then it's so powerful.

Danny: Everybody is, right? I think the key is also just finding that thing that you really you nerd out on, man. What I've noticed is my friends that are, they just seem to be the most content.

They're just, they're happy individuals. They're fascinated with whatever it is they do for work, like it, it may not be. Their hobby, but it's something that they just like really, they really find interesting. They really [00:26:00] want to be great at and they enjoyed the progress they have to make towards, improving and whatever that career field is.

And I always found it interesting because for me. I like what I do a lot, probably more so than I feel is even fair, right? Like I like it so much that it feels unfair to other people that they don't like what they do as much. But, then I meet people and they're just like, I met this guy was a blacksmith and he was so interested in these I don't even know what they're called, like some sort of ornate twisting technique that he was like one of the few people in the state that could do for these massive wrought iron fences that he would weld and hammer and like legit blacksmith. I thought he made swords.

I didn't know those were like real people anymore. And he was so interested, so into it. And I was just like, every time I'd talk to this guy, I'd just be like, dude, tell me more about this. This is fascinating. Or like my buddy, that's my training partner, he's in wine sales. So he was a, I'm gonna mess this up.

He's not a Somalian, he's a Somalier, I believe is how you say it. Big difference. Huge difference. You can [00:27:00] be

Courtney: both, but one does not necessarily mean you're the other.

Danny: Dude, but he's so into it. And he just, it's not necessarily the wine. He likes the history and he likes the stories of the vineyards.

So like he told me this story of this vineyard that actually likes this wine from this vineyard. And he's Oh, this is my favorite vineyard. This story, check out this story. So this the daughter of the guy that owns the vineyard. She goes off to Penn. She's an Ivy League graduate.

She's working in corporate America, working her way up in these big organizations. Her dad gets in a car accident. He has a spinal spinal cord injury at the neck. Can't run the vineyard anymore. So she leaves her corporate job, moves back to Sonoma County. Turns us into one of the best, the small vineyards in the entire world.

And her mom is like drawing all the labels and painting all the labels and they have this cat named bill And or bob or something like that and this cat's been bit by a rattlesnake twice and he's on the label Of this of this, bottle [00:28:00] and like he's named all this stuff and i'm just like I just want to buy this I don't even drink wine.

Courtney: Yeah,

Danny: but i'm in i'm gonna i'm gonna buy this, right? Like it's actually would love this and then I go try to tell her the story. I butcher it You know, and it's like Ryan needs to tell her whatever you just told me. But like it's exciting to hear people that are excited in other things so much that they have this like natural passion for it.

And that is, I, that is I don't know it's attractive in a way that you just want to be around people like that, so I feel if you can find that, and I think we both have, and a lot of people that we work with, they find that with the way they're doing PT. It's such a cool place to live because it doesn't feel like an arduous draining task to do what we do on a daily basis.

Courtney: I really, I'm going to draw a couple of parallels here, but I really catching people and like for a big part of me, the Rainmaker was basically taking people from part time jobs, the clinical Rainmaker, it's a side hustle or it's a part time job, and if they put their hand, they put their head down and they do it by the time that they get to the end of the six months, like they're doing the full time thing.

And to see and to hear [00:29:00] the weight that has come off these people's shoulders from quitting a job that like a lot of clinicians view themselves, as artists, they're skilled, like they have this passion for this thing, and they just don't get to exercise it in that way at their other job. And so when you can say Oh, no, here's the path for you to go learn to go treat your craft the way that you want to, it's so uplifting to people.

And I think. And just listen to Ben Stiller on a podcast, talk about severance. And I think a lot of people feel that way. If you've seen the show on Apple TV, they feel like they're just clicking little numbers and putting them into a box and like clicking widgets all day. There's a lot of PTs and clinicians that feel that same way.

All day, every day. And when you're like, Oh no. We we can help you with that. And then you just see them light up because they're going and they're like treating people the way that they, the way they thought physical therapy was supposed to be the whole time. Just their whole demeanor changes and they become a whole different person and they get on this.[00:30:00]

Personal development, like roller coaster in this path of self discovery, which it sounds almost cliche and it sounds corny, but it is so true. Like the conversations that we get to have after the backside of this things like I really didn't like my job. I didn't like my work. My. My relationship with my spouse, my kids were affected, but now I'm doing this and it gives me some bandwidth.

I'm able to be present and I get to treat people the way that I feel like they need to be treated. It's life changing for people. And that's what really excites me about the whole thing as a coach is the transformation. That's what got me into physical therapy in the first place was like the transformation.

I'm like a tangible results person. Like I like mowing the lawn because Hey, look what I did. And you can do the same thing with coaching like, Hey, look where you're at. We implemented this plan and now look where you're at. And so I, that's what I like about it and it's just to be walking along somebody with me like, Hey, you're doing it, man.

You're riding on schedule. I love getting people to [00:31:00] that, to the finish line there.

Danny: So yeah. Cool. You've coached a lot of people in that program. So the Rainmaker program, by the way, is our program that we help people get started and get to the point where they can go full time in their business.

That's the whole intention of this program, right? But in, in all honesty, not everybody succeeds, and as much as I wish it was the case it's just not. And there's a lot of things that maybe are unexpected or things that sometimes people are unwilling to change or, work on. What do you feel like the biggest Sticking points have been for people that you've seen that just have not, been able to make it work because we see a lot of people obviously like it's very high success rate.

But but I always feel bad for those folks because I always, there's something there that's holding them back usually and. And I wish they could experience what you're talking about, because I know what that feels like, you know what that feels like and it is a game changer for just like your enthusiasm for your career.

And so obviously we love helping people get to that point, but what do you what have you seen that [00:32:00] seems to be like these variables just don't let people even get to the point that we're trying to help them get to?

Courtney: The biggest challenge that you come across, and it. Presents itself in a lot of different ways, but the biggest challenge is somebody's fear of failure, right?

Their unwillingness to be, have a light shine on them and then they might not, they might not be able to stand up to it. And sometimes it comes in Hey, I don't want to go market to people, or Hey, I feel nervous about talking to people about money, or Hey, I feel nervous about doing a workshop in front of other people, but it all comes back to, I tried to.

Relay to our, to the people in the rainmaker that if you could promise somebody an outcome in physical therapy and all they have to do is work the plan would you still put them through the plan? Yeah, every time it was like, that's what we're doing here. And you just have to trust in the process and [00:33:00] some people, like whatever stuff that they had going on, or they grew up and they, their mindset is a certain way or whatever else, they just don't trust the process or they don't.

Put themselves out there enough or they try one time and it didn't work. I listened to a podcast yesterday. My, my own clinical director started his own podcast. I told him for years, bad idea. Don't want to do it. I don't have the bandwidth. And he's I'll fucking do it on my own.

And so I listened to the 1st episode where he's interviewing. My other P. T. And she reminds me like she wanted to be our, she would be our students. You want to work where we're at. And I forgot about this, but she said, oh, I, I find an excuse to email about every quarter. Hey, I want to be your student.

We don't take students like, Hey, I would like to work there. We're not interested. I turned her down seven or eight times and she just kept coming back and it's those are the kinds of people that are going to be successful. And so if you're not that kind of person, I'm. Then you're just going to have to adapt and learn how to take failure as it comes.[00:34:00]

We all are as entrepreneurs, it sounds glossy and nice. Even I talk about it that way, but there's periods of time where we're eating glass and we're just having to like, learn to learn the love, the taste of our own blood. Basically, and so it's like there's up times and there's down times, but you just have to learn how to enjoy the taste of your own blood sometimes.

And they're like, this is great, but the outcome is going to be really nice.

Danny: I feel everything's tough, man. I think that that is, I don't know anybody that doesn't have to work through some variation of that, right? Like I just, it is a very common issue whether you're PT or not or whatever you're trying to do.

And. It's, I always found it interesting because I didn't have a business coach whenever I started or anything like that. And I look back about the number of times that like things didn't go the way that we wanted to, and luckily for me, they're like, I had Ashley and it was like, it's very supportive person.

And even if I get frustrated man, [00:35:00] like I did this workshop and nobody showed up or one person showed up. And you're like what do we gotta do better next time? You obviously know the, these are important for us to do as a business. And it wasn't just at least I had somebody that, that was positive that helped with that.

And had, we obviously had a reason that we wanted to be, successful. But for some people, maybe they don't have that support system. And even with us, you would think, okay, cool, this is why we're here. But it's just so hard to say, the, cause a lot of it's so mental when you're starting, it's not oh, can you do this?

Maybe it is, maybe you're just not that good of a clinician and you should wait. You should become a better clinician first. But then I see a lot of people that are like 10 years out of school. It's how long do you need? Like you probably are. at your capacity, probably not going to get that much better.

It's marginal at best. If you're three to five years out of school and you have a lot of reps in your belt, maybe sooner, like you can typically get great outcomes for people, especially in an environment where they're paying to work with you and you have more time and and you can focus more on them.

Like it allows us to be better inherently, which is which is good. But, when we look at the confidence side of [00:36:00] someone turning you down and you just not being like, Oh, I suck. This isn't going to work, like the ability to bounce back from that. I don't, I just don't know anything that, I don't know anything where you learn that.

You can learn it in sports, you can learn it in life in lots of other ways, but when you look at entrepreneurship, I don't know a better way to learn how to deal with rejection than starting your own business. It's inherently going to happen. There's no one I've ever met that has been smooth sailing the whole time.

And even if it does happen eventually, That's actually worse for them because by the time that they get to a bigger business They haven't built that callous or that understanding of how to deal with rejection and then they implode their business because like they've never had to learn that it's like someone has given them this like super secret weapon and didn't actually show him how to use it, right?

And it's you blew yourself up, right? You didn't know what was going on. And I think that's the whole point of it is you have to learn these things the hard way so that you can take on harder problems. I think about the shit that we deal with, dude, on a freaking weekly basis.

The shit that I deal with would have crippled me when I first started, right? And so I had to get, build the [00:37:00] tolerance to these things along the way. And that's what's so hard for people to understand is you have to eat shit for a while. You have to do it because you'll have a lot more respect going forward.

You'll learn a lot of lessons this way and it's going to affect your business center or your life in a lot of ways outside of it. Like I just think of people learning sales. I remember I talking to my brother in law who does, he does as part of the acquisition team for PT biz, and Brandon, he had to learn, he had to talk to people on the phone. And he's not even selling anything. He's just literally like helping them with different resources that they might that might benefit them as as another opportunity for us to add value to people's time.

And he was really struggling with it. He was like, dude, I just, I'm getting really nervous before this, whatever. And I'm like, Dude, this is going to help you in so many other ways. Like what other areas of your life do you get nervous? Do you have to have these conversations? He's I don't know talking to somebody that's working on our house or a difficult conversation with a teacher or another parent or something.

And and now all of a sudden it's anymore. Like it's so much better. And all these other areas of his life have improved because he got over a mental hurdle of something that was challenging for him [00:38:00] in business and in our business. I think you have to look at it that way. What are you learning and how is this going to help you on the backend?

Cause if not, it's just scary.

Courtney: It's just one continuous game of skill acquisition. The skills that I have now, I only have because I didn't have them back then and I had to learn them. And to, to your point, like the problems that I have to solve in my business five years from now, I'm not equipped to solve those problems.

But I, if I look back on the problems from five years ago oh, that's cute those are cute little problems are solving there. And we're always on that. We're always on that continuum and on that spectrum. But if you don't work to acquire that skill it's just like learning how to manipulate somebody's spine or how to dry needle or whatever, you had to do a lot of reps to get good at that thing that you're good at. And why would marketing be any different? Why would networking be any different? Why would, sales be any different? It's just skill acquisition. And so if you can take the mindset about that, like I'm not very good, just like I would tell my patients like, yeah, yet you're not very good at it yet [00:39:00] because we haven't practiced it yet.

And it's the same, it's the same mentality is I, here's another skill I've got to go learn.

Danny: What would make us think that we'd be good at anything to begin with anyway? Like it's such a silly thing. I wish I could go back and tell myself this when I was like 12.

If you could actually understand this when you're like 12 years old, you're just unstoppable. Like you just, no problem.

Courtney: I want to talk to you on two points this because number one, our kids like are going through that stuff all the time. Like they're constantly failing all the time and it's hard.

And you can understand why your kids would come home and they're exhausted, like they're dealing with shitty people at school that they didn't like, and they had to keep it all together all day. And so sometimes they will come home and unload on you. And this is our responsibility to just be like.

Yeah, man. Lay it on me because I can handle it. And so I'm going to take that burden off you. You bent. I'll listen. I'm not going to solve any of your problems, but they've been eating shit for eight hours. And things are hard. They're failing all the time. Adults never. Running [00:40:00] the things that they have to fail out all the time.

And so I'm trying to put myself back into this. I'm trying to learn skills and I'm trying to like, so regular, like here's my piano. I started taking piano lessons like three years ago. I'm terrible, still terrible, but on my 1330 on my quarterly plan, I tried to add some kind of new skill where I'm failing and sucking all the time.

Number one, I think it's good for my brain. But number two, I want my kids to see oh, we, you never arrive, like you're going to keep working on that thing. So right now I'm working on juggling and I'm terrible at it. Like I'm going to be juggling by, the live events. It's Oh my God, I'm terrible at it.

But that's, I think part of it, I think to be a continuous learner, like you're working on motor skills, you're accessing different parts of your brain. It allows your kids to recognize Oh yeah, once I become an adult, I get to shut it down and I get to coast like, I don't think so.

Get a hobby, go get some skills and go, keep working on the shit.

Danny: Yeah, it's just continually just being bad at stuff and getting better. And [00:41:00] some stuff maybe we're more naturally inclined to be good at. I think that's what we deviate towards. Like we find that in sports, right?

It's not I was naturally really bad at basketball, I probably wouldn't, I would probably shy away from wanting to play pickup basketball and then I would play in a league or maybe try out for for a middle school or high school team or something like that versus, Oh, maybe I'm just like a naturally like better distance runner.

So now I focus on maybe cross country makes sense or track or something, right? And I think people figure that out with those. But, after that, like you don't really see that a whole lot. You really have to seek out things that you're trying to learn that are new, except for if you run a business, guess what?

It's coming for you all the time.

Courtney: It

Danny: happens all the time. It's literally the thing that I think is one of the most interesting parts about running a business. And one of the reasons why I may never, ever not have a business that I'm a part of some sort is because I think that I could be. Super complacent like I think if I didn't have something that was what I was trying to get better at I would be real lazy I would probably just play a bunch of video games or [00:42:00] just watch a bunch of sports Probably I would I just wouldn't move a lot.

Probably I would just be like sedentary Lazy just let my brain rot away And, it would suck. That would suck for me. And I need a catalyst for me to be forced to learn and get better at things. I've not found anything, a single thing, that forces you to have to learn as much as a business does.

Because it changes, it evolves. You think you're good at something, and then you have to make a thing better. And then that changes, and then this person changes. And then you, it's just like stacking. And I think that's what makes it so appealing. It's such an interesting game.

That you get a chance to be a part of, right? It's just that's all it is. It's just, it's a game. And I, there's a book, I forget the name of it now, but it's about it's essentially imagine that you, it's your video game, like your life is a video game and you have to do these things to like level up your score for your avatar or whatever.

But apply that to, to your life. So you get you're learning the piano. Okay, you're leveling up in arts or something like that. Or, you're, now all of a sudden you're like, tracking the fruits and vegetables you eat and protein. So now you're leveling up in nutrition, right? And you're having these difficult [00:43:00] conversations with kids and Cool.

You're leveling up as a parent or like now adventure. Okay, cool. Do something really cool. Something hard that pushes you like versus you just coast the rest of the time. You never, ever do anything else. Like I love the idea of that, and I think it's a good metaphor to think of your own sort of avatar and what level would you be.

In life, because, I don't know, does it matter at the end? I don't, who fucking knows? I'm not sure. All I know is I want to play the game. Whatever I'm interested in that, and that gives me a lot of energy and fulfillment.

Courtney: I'm too itchy and too curious to like I, I can hard set focus on like a task for five years.

Which sounds like a long time, but like I've been in this, our business has been open just over seven and three or four years into it. I was like, all right, I need the next challenge. Like not that business wasn't challenging, but it's okay, I need to go learn a new big set of skills.

And so that's what's always I think that's what's maybe sometimes hardwired with a lot of business owners is they do seek out the challenge and they, we Work with a lot of people that are, athletes and former athletes and [00:44:00] whatever else, because they like the competitive nature of it.

I think the people, I bet if we took the top 15 percent of all the people that are in, our coaching organization, I bet the top 15 percent were pretty high level athletes at some point in time. Just because they know how to face adversity and they know how to face failure and move on.

Danny: Or something, right? Like high level. Yeah. High level musician. They were, because I think that's the thing is, yeah there's some level of like progress. I had this I was working with this therapist one time and I was like real frustrated with I would just get frustrated with people around me.

I'm just like I have these because I have friends that I've had, since like high school and very few people that I still keep up with, from that point. And this was earlier on, whenever I was maybe a couple of years into starting our business.

And I realized I just was, I had a lot of shit that I needed to figure out because I just was not an enjoyable person to be around. It wasn't very happy. I don't get really frustrated with people around me. That works in my perception complacent, right? They're just like, why are you okay with this, dude?

Like, why don't you do more of this or whatever? [00:45:00] And they would get really frustrated with me because it'd be like, why are you, do you care? I'm good. What's your deal? And for me, you realize it's just oh what I feel called to do is not what everybody else does. And this person, they told me.

Something that I'll never forget. She was, she said, Danny, some people are here on vacation and some people are here to work and you can't get mad at the people that are on vacation because you're here to work, like just go to work and do it. And I'm like, ah, and then I got jealous that I couldn't be on vacation.

Why can't I be on vacation? He's I like

Courtney: vacation, but why am I working on vacation? Yeah, I completely understand that. Our vacations, like I, we've never taken a vacation where we like go sit on the beach. Like I can't do it. It's boring. Like I'm not doing that.

Danny: I see. I have a hard time with that too.

But actually would do that for weeks at a time. So for us, like when we lived in Hawaii, we literally lived on the beach. And what was awesome about that was it's, there's the beach you can go surf. You can go whatever, go, [00:46:00] paddleboard, but then there's also these like massive mountains behind you.

If you want to go hiking, so there's so much activity to do. Like it's like the perfect place.

Courtney: I could do

Danny: that,

Courtney: right? I could, I can lay on the beach for a day or I'm pretty fair skinned, like I'm going to catch on fire before too long, so I don't think that's that long.

Danny: Go, go to the jungle, walk around a little bit, come back, eat a strawberry guava you find or something.

I don't know, but yeah, I need something to do as well. I think people, we maybe have to work on that a little bit, just being able to be a little bit more. Yeah, just calm, and still, I guess is a good word, but for that, but yeah, this was a, this was fun conversation, man.

I know obviously you got a lot going on. I feel like we barely got into what I even want to talk to you about, but it was a fun conversation. I hope people enjoy this. If nothing else, it'll give you people an idea of just the way that you're wired, the way you think about, the way you think about coaching, where you came from, and and what I appreciate, and this is one of the reasons why we're so fortunate to work with somebody like yourself, is just your sort of unique approach to business life, and all the things around you that you're able to pull together and make these unique associations that that I appreciate, right?

It just helps [00:47:00] me see the world in a slightly different way, and I really do like that. I know it's been a massive catalyst for us and for people that we work with and and also just like you being able to help with live events has made him so much better. You're quite funny.

Like you do a good job of teeing up, these presenters that we have and keeping things but also I think a lot of people have just a lot of respect for what you've been able to do and enjoy you as a leader and being there in front of everybody. So anyway, I'm glad we had a chance to share some of what you're working on and why we decided to bring you on full time.

Courtney: I'm just happy to be here.

Danny: Glad to be on the team. We're glad to have you on the team, man. I think we have an awesome team. I was thinking about the other day, I was like, man, if we took our team. I feel if we took our team and we entered some sort of like intramural competition, I think we would do really well.

Courtney: What about those adventure races, with Bear Grylls, where they like drop them off at PG or whatever I think we'd crush it. Or yeah

Danny: what was it called, like the great, not great. The great race. I know what you're talking about. The amazing race. Amazing race. Yes. I think if you took our team and the [00:48:00] amazing race and a bunch of other companies and they got to pick equivalent amount of people I like our chances or we would definitely go down trying real hard.

Courtney: Yeah, we would either win or we would come in spectacularly last. Yeah,

Danny: that could be either one, but either way thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it guys. Thanks so much for for listening to the podcast and we will catch you next week.

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